With all of the talk of abortion regulations and personhood bills in the news lately, I want to turn this month’s Forward Thinking prompt to that issue—specifically, I want to invoke thought about “personhood.” Note that discussing personhood is not identical to discussing whether to ban abortion, because a person can technically embrace both fetal personhood and abortion rights on a bodily autonomy and/or self defends basis. So I want to bracket any discussion of the legality or even morality of abortion and instead focus solely on personhood itself:

What is personhood? When does it begin? When does it end? Is it gained and/or lost gradually or all at once?

I want to invite readers to discuss this question in the comment section and to invite bloggers to respond on their own blogs. At the end of two weeks I will post a round-up of links and excerpts to both blog posts elsewhere and especially insightful comments here. Bloggers should email their links to lovejoyfeminism (at) gmail (dot) com with “Forward Thinking” in the subject line if they want to be included in the round-up.

Libby Anne grew up in a large evangelical homeschool family highly involved in the Christian Right. College turned her world upside down, and she is today an atheist, a feminist, and a progressive. She blogs about leaving religion, her experience with the Christian Patriarchy and Quiverfull movements, the detrimental effects of the "purity culture," the contradictions of conservative politics, and the importance of feminism.

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